RA GEO/ADD52/1: Garrison orders page 1

The Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle, an ancient position dating back to the eleventh century, is in charge of the Castle, on behalf of the Sovereign. A small series of seventeenth and eighteenth-century books of orders issued by the Constables commences in 1668, when Prince Rupert of the Rhine, cousin of Charles II, was appointed as Constable. The Order Books reflect the duties of the Constable at that period, with many orders and copy letters relating to the Castle’s Garrison, of which he was the Commander, and to the trees and game in Windsor Forest, of which he was the Keeper.

The orders issued by Prince Rupert in 1668-69 included new instructions ‘for the better Government of the Garrison’, and authority for trees to be felled in Windsor Forest in order to carry out repairs in the Keep [Round Tower], which the Prince had selected for his ‘Lodgings’, and to repair the Forest fences [the ‘Pale’], to keep in the new herd of deer.